


the colours of a day

by pyrrhlc



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Multi, POV Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 07:23:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12882954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhlc/pseuds/pyrrhlc
Summary: The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?Taako doesn’t remember everything. But he remembers the skies.





	the colours of a day

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](https://stevetwisp.tumblr.com/post/167780802469/) post.

  **i.**

 

It’s a cold night, Taako thinks, which is good, because it means there’s less chance of him sleeping, and falling, and waking suddenly, alert and afraid—

The night is cold. He breathes in the brilliance of those cold, hard stars, and wonders extensively what lies beyond them. This sky does not feel as familiar as it should. And it should, Taako thinks, clenching his fists, harsh and unforgiving, because after everything, everything he has endured—

Taako knows the stars. In his life, the sky has always been significant.

 

**ii.**

 

When he first meets Merle and Magnus, somehow, almost inadvertently, they feel familiar.

Magnus is a man too big for his body. He is warm and harsh and forgiving, and his laughter is like sandpaper – he laughs too often, Taako thinks, far too often for his liking. Taako thinks this quite a lot. There is so much of Magnus, and so little of him, that it almost feels like cheating. Magnus is two people; Taako is just one. He shouldn’t be, his simple, murky outline of a mind thinks, but he is. Taako is alone. He feels it more keenly than ever when surrounded by the enormity that is Magnus Burnsides. He likes to touch, too, which is annoying for Taako, who just wants to be left alone. At first, he thinks that Magnus doesn’t understand this – can’t understand it, with that soft-wired, goldfish brain of his – but after a while, Taako realises that it is because of this fact that Magnus does it all the more. He leans, he sits, back pressed close to Taako at mealtimes, he slings his arm around him whenever Taako comes in slightest reach of him, as if to be held is to be… What, exactly? Loved?

No, not loved. Taako is not loved. He knows that, at least.

Merle is different. He’s short, stumpy and almost inscrutable in the way he looks at Taako, one gnarled hand tangled in his ashen-grey beard, pea-green flowers erupting from the holes in his socks. He takes Magnus’s affection in stride, like a parent, or some other obscene father figure Taako never really had to rely on, and it’s… nice. It’s nice to have someone tease him, chastise him, force him from the sadness that he’s cocooned around himself like a second skin. Merle is solid and dependable in the way none of Taako’s extended family ever were. If Taako trusted, he might trust Merle.

But he doesn’t. He can’t. Taako trusts no-one – it’s the only way to be. The only way he’s ever been, in all his long years.

The day they set out for Neverwinter, the sky is bright blue. Not a cloud remains in the sky, and up above, frolicking between trees, the sun beats down on their backs like a hasty and hurried heartbeat. Taako shovels his pack onto his shoulder and marches forwards with the other two; Magnus on his left, Merle on his right. They make steady progress through the forest, and by the end of it, Taako is almost pleased; he doesn’t know these men just yet, and yet somehow, they’re a comfort to him. Yes, that’s it. A comfort. Taako doesn’t even need to think about it, really – that old familiarity is so tangible, so concrete, that for a moment he can almost grasp it, and then—

Fear grips him. It’s an old one, really – that overwhelming sense of dread that comes when he realises exactly how much of his life he can no longer remember, how many years have been lost, now, to the dusty, tired onslaught of time. Volumes of Taako’s life have become such anonymities. Pages upon pages, reams and reams of sloping ink, all gone now, because he has forgotten. He’s not even sure of his age, anymore – it’s just another detail of his past gone awry, turned to dust. He stopped counting so long ago – does it even matter anymore? Does he even care?

He tells himself he doesn’t, but then, at the end of the day, when the cobalt blue above has turned black and when his fears are so much louder between the recesses of his head, Taako thinks that he may, for a moment, care about those years he has lost without explanation. He is not a true person, really, without his memories. He isn’t Taako, but someone else. Something much more terrible and unknowable that any blacked-out, sun-heavy reminiscence, a photograph with curling corners. No, the absence that lingers there is different. It is warped, and dark and dangerous, bound by blood and chipped teeth and pointless bar fights. It is unknowable.

It is unknowable, and it fucking terrifies him.

 

**iii.**

 

Taako can’t quite figure out when Magnus first learned what he was most afraid of.

It was close to the beginning, he thinks, sat back against the rough trunk of some old, twisted tree, abandoned, like everything else in the Felicity Wilds, left to rot and shiver and remember. Magnus knew then, somehow, of the demons Taako carried, the noose that hung like an invitation right around his neck. He knew, and he still knows. Magnus has not forgotten.

Taako wishes he would. It sure would make the nights easier to bear.

 

**iv.**

 

The usual void ensnares him.

Taako is used to this. He can deal with this, that unbearable sensation of not knowing, not feeling anything except fear. But tonight, the nightmares are entangled with something else. Coupled with the demons of more recent memories, of Sazed, of the caravan and the people, of the children, falling like dominoes, one after the other after the other. The memories flicker; the flashes repeat. Taako cannot outlive them.

He claws his way through, breaking the surface of the dream like a man coming up for air, his hands scratching at the base of his throat as he scrambles, once more, for the ingredient that he must have missed, the one he must, absolutely, have gotten wrong, transfigured into Nightshade or Hemlock or Snakeroot, the last fatal sign of his arrogance, before the fall, before everything—

He gasps and immediately claps a hand over his mouth. He must not make a sound. The two sleeping beside him must never, ever know, or even dream of, the monsters they are carrying alongside them. Taako is untouchable, corrupted, filthy, haggard and finally worthless—

It’s too late. Face half-buried in his sleeping bag, Magnus rolls over onto his side, his auburn hair half-tangled in his beard, his pointed sideburns, the strong, broad block of his chin, and opens his eyes.

Yes. He opens his eyes and looks at Taako, looks at him despite the endless, raging monologue that echoes on and on in Taako’s ears.

_Stupid stupid stupid stupid you ridiculous idiot—_

“Taako?” Magnus’s voice is slow and littered by the incoherence of sleep. He speaks clearly this time, however.

“Taako,” the voice ventures, cautious and measured in a way that it has never been before. The pause between utterances is almost too much for him to bear. Finally, Magnus speaks. “You’re safe here, buddy.”

Taako looks determinedly away from him, his gaze stretching upwards to address the trees above. Fairytales happen in-between trees. Not nightmares. He lets out a breath and examines the sky. Inky black. Like a blanket has been thrown over the world, muffling anything and everything beneath. Anything that moves. Any danger that creeps.

Bullshit, Taako thinks. There is always danger somewhere. He is never safe. He can’t be. Taako trusts no-one. He doesn’t need to, and he won’t start now. He can’t start now. It would ruin him, in every sense of the word. Taako has forgotten what it means to care for somebody other than himself. He doesn’t think he ever has—

—and yet, somehow, he knows that he has. Knows it deep in the very marrow of his bones: Taako cared once, and was cared for, even if the memory of it is long since smudged, long since removed from the library that was his life. A single book remains, now, and it is this: sitting here, his back pressed up against a tree, with everything he owns scattered within a single metre radius of him, sleeping – or pretending to sleep – alongside the only two he’s ever allowed to watch him meditate whilst they keep watch.

Taako doesn’t do trust. Trust is not his style. But the inky black sky says differently. It makes him think of every other sky they’ve shared – it isn’t many – and wish that it were more. Yes. That’s what he wants, for Magnus and Merle to have been there since always, a fairytale made true. It’s a ridiculous fantasy, but the thought of it remains tightly lodged in his heart, a wish he can’t let go of. Taako doesn’t want to be lonely anymore.

His eyes glance sideways, watching Magnus pretending not to watch him. He is not safe, and he is not trusting, but he is… content, somehow. Content and unafraid. Taako sighs and leans back, for the last time, against the tree with the uncomfortable bark. Magnus’s eyes follow his steady breaths. Then, slowly, they too close.

The darkness blinks, but Taako does not fear it.

 

**v.**

 

The day they destroy Phandalin, the sky is a blaze of orange. It’s the colour of sand, the colour of disaster, the colour of—

Death.

Clouds billow around them. A part of Taako can’t quite believe he fucked up this spectacularly _again_ , but no, here they are, standing in the midst of a perfect circle of black glass, and the entirety of it feels so familiar, so god-damn _unreal_ , that he almost laughs. He almost does. The memories are so close; he can taste them on his tongue. Like snow. Like ash.

Everything is gone. Taako will never mention it, but part of him feels glad, in some perverse way, that there aren’t any bodies. There’s nothing to tie him to this crime, this scene of destruction. Taako is free.

The clouds are chalk-white, and they brush up against valley floor like a mother drawn to her lost child. It would be comforting, had he not known what they really were. Sand and shingle, dust and debris. The skeletons of the dead hang suspended above their hands, liquid in formation.

 _You’re not responsible for this_ , says a voice inside his head, but deep in his abdomen, Taako knows that it is not the truth. They are all responsible. They have all failed.

Part of him yearns to do better, but the rest of him stands still. Watching. Waiting.

Slowly, the dust clouds descend. And Taako, like all others before him, fades quietly and quickly from view.

 

**vi.**

 

These are his skies, Taako thinks, looking back on all of them. These are his lives, his magnum opuses, the visions he nurses most carefully and well. Taako sleeps with demons buried alongside him, but he sleeps with his skies, too. The golden skies of his home planet, those bright crimson shades that very nearly erased him, standing tall on the roof of a home that was not and will never be his; the brittle, iron-grey of those planets without life, without language, without discovery, the stars above them hanging immobile, like stainless steel factories, glinting in the light of the fading sun; petrol-blue massacres, the skies he shared, always and forever, with Lup, running and hiding, never quite alone. These are the quiet times, he thinks. These are the highlights of his life.

But most of all, he comes to believe that the skies he loves best are those best seen in recollection – a vast blue expanse, an inky blackness that covers every corner of the world, a red-orange sky so very dense and powerful that it would make clouds cry – these are his distances, he thinks, lying back on the grass just beyond Magnus’s new home, Lup sleeping peacefully by his side, their hands twisted together in some semblance of a defence no longer needed. These are his places, and his moments. Taako turns his head and expels a sigh larger than that of all others laid before it, and Lup, resplendent as she’s ever been, turns her head and smiles dreamily at him, her eyes unfocused, still yet unused to owning a body, after all these years of waiting. Taako has waited long enough. He raises his head and stares at the sky above him.

This one is his favourite. The sky without fear.

And, slowly and gently, it begins to rain.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic did not end up where I thought it would, but nevertheless, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I love the theory that Taako’s “idiot wizard” persona is a result of his separation from Lup. The more time he spends with his family, the more real he feels. It sure is something.
> 
> Thank you so reading! As always, kudos/comments are greatly appreciated. I read every single one! <3
> 
> Both the quote and the title are extracts from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s a truly terrific book.


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